


witching hours

by earlylight



Series: No Man's Land [1]
Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: (no i am not sorry), Alternate Universe - No Five/Nine, Drug Use, F/F, Femslash February 2019, written in a style i call "in WEEDias res"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 23:58:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17632235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlylight/pseuds/earlylight
Summary: Time moves like this, in fits and starts – there’s that scene from, one of those sci-fi movies: someone puts two dots on a piece of paper and then folds them together, punching a pencil through. There’s her kitchen on one side and her kitchen on the other, and Angela’s punched through from one moment to the next, air hazed sweet-sharp with smoke, softening the light.A fragment of time, as Angela hosts Ladies’ Night, pertaining to exactly this: they are ladies, and it is night.





	witching hours

**Author's Note:**

> What up, I'm back! Hope your 2018 went well, because mine suuuucked. Here's something I hope doesn't suck: women getting to relax and express themselves in spaces they feel safe, which is an evergreen mood for 2019. Happy Femslash Feb, everyone! <3

—More like the _bitchin’_ hour, hey-oh,” Darlene cuts in, and takes the joint from Shayla – lips pursed, drag deep. Angela blinks, takes a moment, rewinds – that’s right, Shayla was—but her attention had snagged, skipped right back, the sentence untethered from context, a slice of time perfectly _julienned._

Dom makes a face, leaning away from Darlene as she exhales. Dom doesn’t _partake_ , in her words – _more like, parTOKE,_ Darlene had said, quick on the draw, earning a sternly spoken _I will break up with you, don’t think I won’t, _too much warmth tucked into the words to pose any real threat – Dom doesn’t partake, because, in her words:

> OPTION A: it’s illegal in the state of New York (for _recreational_ use, of _course_ , but they all have glaucoma, it’s legit, Darlene has the scripts to prove it)
> 
> OPTION B: she’s a federal agent (okay, _narc_ )
> 
> OPTION C: one of them has to be the responsible adult (wow, snoozefest, and a good six pack of IPAs too late in that respect, ell-em-ay-oh)
> 
> OPTION D: _okay, look,_ she tried it once in college and _freaked out_ and her roommate spent two hours trying to convince her to get down from that rooftop, and—

“Hey, we were just teasing, you don’t have to justify it,” Shayla interjects, waving away Darlene’s sardonic _speak for yourself_ , “To me, Angela, anyone, _especially_ to Darlene. We’ve all been there, you know? Had a bad trip, had to ride it out. _That_ ol’ rodeo.”

“Thanks,” Dom says dryly. “I think.”

“It’s really kind of fascinating, when you think about it,” Shayla continues. “Something chemically designed to relax you can actually make you more anxious. How we’re all built out of the same stuff, but at the same time, we’re all so different. Chaos theory, all up through our nervous system. You know? Angela gets existential, Darlene gets mouthy... – _er,_ ” she corrects, “And I guess I’m a little of A, little of B. Sometimes I’m like, what do you think coded that? Nature, or nurture?”

Darlene attempts a scowl, but she’s too relaxed, and it slides right off her face. “Well, this conversation is _chemically designed_ to be super boring. You don’t talk about the _wonders_ of weed literally _while you’re high_ , dude, that’s like a cardinal sin. I mean, shit, if I wanted some rant on the human condition, I’d just ask Elliot how he feels about Pokémon Go.”

Elliot has an open invitation to Ladies Night. He never comes. Aside from like, Dom’s reluctance to bring any sort of fun into close proximity with her day job, and Darlene “Thirty-Day-Lease” Alderson’s chronic lack of permanent accommodation, they pretty much exclusively hold this gig at Angela’s rather than Shayla’s in order to give him an easy out.

And, considering recent history – it’s really a win-win.

(Darlene, when she found out, had started to laugh, and said something like, _that’s some_ _real-life_ _popping the biggest bottles shit,_ and then refused to give any further context than _the internet is literally a free tool, grandma, use it_.)

“Angela, hey, focus up,” Darlene says, snapping her fingers. “We’re in dire straits, kid. Down in the trenches, with the good old boys, giving ‘em hell for Uncle Sam. We need more ammo if we’re going to make it through the night, so Pokémon _Go and get some fucking_ _shots._ ”

“Pfft, okay, Madame President,” Angela replies, reaching over to pat Darlene gamely on the cheek – nearly overbalancing in the process. Dom grips her arm, warm and steady, and helps her up—

Except that was... an hour ago, maybe. Maybe less. She’s in the kitchen again, now, and her oven clock has been broken for what feels like six years. Time moves like this, in fits and starts – there’s that scene from, one of those sci-fi movies: someone puts two dots on a piece of paper and then folds them together, punching a pencil through. There’s her kitchen on one side and her kitchen on the other, and Angela’s punched through from one moment to the next, air hazed sweet-sharp with smoke, softening the light. _2001: A Space Odyssey?_ She saw that one with the Aldersons, back in the day. Or maybe _Interstellar_.

“So this is Ladies Night,” Dom comments, somewhat unnecessarily, from the peanut gallery, nursing her scotch. Time has passed, and she’s loosened up – no longer the new girl, trying to figure out where she fits – now she’s let her hair down (literally, and it looks _amazing_ in this light, coppery shimmering glory) and feeling comfortable enough to unstick from Darlene’s side, to join Angela in the kitchen as she looks out over her kingdom: pizza boxes strewn across the floor, cushions and blankets nested with bottles, candlelight sliding along the rim of the popcorn bowl, and Darlene and Shayla in the eye of the storm, passing a joint between them, as wild and alive as the debris in their wake.

“We are ladies, and it is night,” Angela concurs eventually, tongue too heavy with the weight of, of _everything_ , but then – a thought suddenly pops up, like a toaster retrofitted with fine blades and the delicacy of a master chef – perfectly _julienned_ – “ _Witching hours_ ,” she says, and starts to giggle, rolling her head halfway into Dom’s shoulder. “Oh my god. _Darlene._ ”

Darlene ignores her. Maybe it’s _Blade Runner_ still... running... in the background. Maybe it’s the distorted space-time of Ladies’ Night, of the _witching hours,_ the dilation between word and thought, action and connection – the Mobius loop of pizza boxes between them falling into Fibonacci flux. Maybe it’s the conversation she’s having with Shayla. Possibly all three are contributing factors.

“They’re not mutually inclusive, dude,” Darlene is saying. “When you _know_ , and when you _act_. Not a two-for-one. Not in _this_ economy.”

“Evidently I got my kicks in before the recession,” Shayla counters. “Buy one, get one free. Much better deal.”

“ _Lucky_ you,” Darlene drawls, taking a pull from her beer. “Okay, tell you what, I’ll give you one on the house. Just ‘cause I like the cut of your jib, sailor. Take your pick.”

“ _Act_ , then.”

“ _Well_ ,” Darlene says, the word rolling slyly across her tongue. She swings her head around, languid, meets Angela’s gaze, finally. Angela opens her mouth – she was going to tell Darlene something, something about... it’s gone now. Probably wasn’t important. “Angela – maybe you’d like to share this one with the class, huh?” Darlene continues, grin turned wicked.

“ _No,_ ” Shayla says, delightedly, and “Wait... _what_ are we talking about?” asks Dom, less so.

Elliot is a year and a half older than her, and a full four years older than Darlene, so by the time Darlene hit high school he was already on the next train out of Washington Township. They had to relearn their friendship without Elliot in the middle, tying it together. And high school is... high school. By senior year, Angela had one fist full of mommy issues and the other fist full of eyeliner, deep into her goth phase—

“Please. You were _emo,_ ” Darlene corrects, entirely inaccurately, brandishing her beer at Angela from her perch on the cushion opposite. “You had the whole, bottle-black, side fringe going on, dolled up in vintage ’05 Hot Topic, and you were into like, Death Cab, and Bright Eyes, Fall Out Boy—”

—she was deep into her _goth_ phase, and listened to The Smiths on her iPod Mini, and snuck American Spirits behind the bleachers, and _Darlene_ was—

“—Not important to the story,” Darlene interjects. “We all know how my childhood was. A garbage fire, by any other name, would still smell like a fucking _garbage fire_. Anyway. So it’s my Fuck It All Up Fifteenth—”

“I thought I was telling it,” Angela says, somewhat affronted. Shayla soothes across her arm, and then shifts upwards, making space for Angela to lean back, rest her head against Shayla’s chest. She’s flagging a bit, now, her high waning, pulling her eyes further closed, so she indulges it. Shayla’s pulse is steady. It steadies her.

Angela lets the thread hang, and Darlene forges ahead with reckless abandon. “—It’s my Fuck It Up Fifteenth, and I was a confused, angry kid let off my leash – Mom had fucked off somewhere for whatever reason, like she ever gave a shit about my birthday anyway, so I got my fake ID and a clone of Mom’s credit card that I’d skimmed the previous week printed out at the library, and then got a _shit-ton_ of booze. A fucking, like, _imperial shit-ton_. It was a full house, and we trashed it, I mean – no one was there for me, because no one _liked_ me, but they liked my booze, and I’m out in our backyard surrounded by empty bottles and I just wanted to _scream_ , right up at the sky, just shred my brains into the air, you know – but Angela’s lurking out by the fence, full of angst and American Spirit, and I am fucked _all_ the way up, got more shit bottled up inside than all the liquor stacked up in the kitchen, and I’m like. In for a penny, you know.”

Angela lets the scene play out behind her eyelids. There had been tongue. Lots of tongue. Maybe some biting. Nothing more than a kiss, but certainly nothing _less –_ Darlene was feral and furious, and Angela just wanted to feel something that wasn’t numb detachment from a cold, uncaring world. Teen hormones are one hell of a drug – Gerard Way was right to be afraid.

“Wow,” says Dom. “Well that sure was... something I just learned. About the two of you.”

“See, Shayla, I had _known_ for a while, but that was the first time I _acted_ on it,” Darlene adds. “Anyway, Angela learned all she knows from me, soooo… you’re welcome.”

“Fake news,” Angela manages, cracking one eye open. She smiles, slow. “Not the worst. But not _my_ first.”

Shayla laughs, vibrations tickling at Angela’s skin. Her hand comes to rest on Angela’s forehead, and she lets her eyes slip closed again as Shayla begins to card fingers aimlessly through her hair. “My cousin’s about your age— she said that girls back then split into two groups: emo chicks, or super obsessed with Twilight. So if Angela was the emo chick, _statistically_ , that has to mean—”

“Don’t even say it,” Darlene warns, as Dom snort-coughs her way into a full-bellied laugh. “Don’t even _imply—_ ”

Angela lets herself drift, again, as the conversation shifts gears, the rise and fall of voices a hum of background static – like distant traffic, below her building, the city running in a steady rhythm – like the beat in her ear as she runs her favorite route, heart-brain-body-lungs all in sync – the songs Shayla likes to hum, woven through the air of her apartment, settling into any room with a familiarity that makes her _ache_ like no one else ever could – this idea of: in the time you spend, in this space that you’ve curated, there are no more variables. Only this: your control, your power, your choices – and your freedom from all of it. How, if you—

Shayla coughs, body jerking sharply behind her, and Angela’s drop-shocked back into consciousness, skimmed forwards in time again, a stone across a pond – “Sorry, babe, Darlene caught me on an inhale,” Shayla murmurs. Angela blinks back into the light, in time to catch Darlene shooting her a wink, and then – very deliberately – upending the rest of her drink onto herself. “Oops,” she says, “Shit, I am a hot mess right now. Dom, come help me clean this up.”

Dom drags a hand through her hair, refusing to meet her eyes. “Darlene. Are you seriously—”

“Oh my _god, Dom,_ come on, this is literally Angela’s favorite sweater, do you want to ruin her night, come on, let’s _go,”_ and she bounces up, nearly upending Dom, who stumbles up towards her – pink high on her cheeks, smiling helplessly as Darlene drags her towards the bathroom, muttering _are we really doing this, oh god, I’m so sorry—_

“I’m not!” Darlene yells back, slamming the door.

Angela sits up, neck twinging at the change in angle, and scooches to the side – Shayla brings her gaze back from the bathroom door to her and shrugs, stretching her arms out slowly, eyes bright and alert despite the hour (whatever hour it is, at this point).

“Last call,” she murmurs, her joint burned down to a stub, held delicately between her thumb and forefinger. Her smile is an invitation. She puts it to her mouth, cheeks hollowed, drawing in deep, then stubs it out in the ashtray and leans in – Angela meets her halfway.

In the morning the spell will break, and the evidence of the night will have to be scrubbed away, and soon enough it’s back to day jobs and deadlines and the twenty-four hour ticker tape parade reminding everyone that they’re all going to die sooner rather than later, but: in this moment, in this hair-breadth of time and space that’s _hers_ , Shayla kisses her, warm and perfect – fingers at her jaw, soft, positioning her head just _so_ – and Angela holds the smoke in her lungs as long as she can, until they burn with it, her ribcage trembling with the restraint... until she finally has to break away, tilt her head up, exhale, stars popping behind her eyelids, as Shayla moves down – impossibly gentle – places a kiss on her neck, and then below—

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't find a way to work it into Angela's dreamy, purple prose-y narrative without it feeling clunky, but yes: Darlene is wearing (and spills beer all over) Angela's Property of Josh Groban sweater. Here's hoping it makes a full recovery.


End file.
